I was born in 1946 in Paris. My mother was British and my father French
but I did not become bilingual immediately as my parents spoke French
to me at first. It was only when I was sent to an English boarding
school in Switzerland at the age of 7 that I acquired English in a
"sink or swim" manner. I don't recall it being difficult as the staff
and my peers were all very friendly. I stayed in that school for 7
years and then, at the age of 14, was sent to a boarding school in
England where I remained until my A-levels. This change was culturally
very difficult and I never quite managed to become totally monocultural
(i.e. British only) in the way others wanted me to be. But after 11
years of English schooling, I wasn't really French any longer and my
return to France to enter the University of Paris at the age of 18 was
quite a change. It took me a number of years to adapt linguistically,
but especially culturally, to France and that explains many of my
reflections in the book I was to write some years later.

2. Is your own family bilingual?

Yes, despite what I wrote in the dedication at the beginning of my
book, "To my wife, Lysiane, for her encouragement and her informative
bilingualism, and to my sons, Marc and Eric, for their monolingualism,
so categorical and yet so natural", the whole family is now bilingual
in English and French. In 1982, after some eight years in the United
States, we came back to Europe for a year and our two monolingual
English-speaking boys acquired French. We kept it alive when we went
back for three years and since 1987, when we returned to Europe for
good, both French and English have been family languages that we use
interchangeably. We change base language a lot and we code-switch from
one language to the other constantly.

3. What approach did you use with your family when your children were
small?

Although we wanted our children to be bilingual, living in an English
environment in a country like the United States made this very
difficult. It is a well known fact that children do not acquire (or
only partly acquire) the minority language if there isn't community or
educational support, or other motivating factors that make using the
language a natural thing. So it was only when our boys were in a
French-speaking environment for a year in 1982 that they finally became
natural users of French. We then worked hard to keep their French alive
when we returned to the States (but in as a natural way as possible).

4. To what extent did your being bilingual determine your research area?

My personal, and early, interest in bilingualism found a first outlet
in my Master's thesis at the University of Paris in which I surveyed
English-French bilinguals in Paris. This was a way for me to start
understanding who I was and to begin thinking of the bilingual as a
different type of speaker-hearer. It was while I was preparing that
piece of work that I discovered researchers like Weinreich and Haugen,
among others. I never dreamed that I would actually become good friends
with Einar Haugen himself.

Your book, "Life with two
languages"

5. What led you to write your book?

The idea of writing my book arose when I was asked to teach a course on
bilingualism in the United States and I realized that there just
weren't any books that covered all aspects of bilingualism. I therefore
very naively asked Harvard University Press whether they would give me
a contract to write such a book. They asked for a chapter, reviewed it
and gave me the go-ahead. I had met Einar Haugen in the meantime and
had become friends with him and his wife, Eva. Einar Haugen was just
the kind of person a young author needed: he took me under his wing,
was very supportive and read every chapter of my book. Of all the
authors on bilingualism, he was, I felt, the most "human" (in the sense
that he wrote about the bilingual PERSON) and I tried to follow his
example in my book (hence the many first-hand accounts in those boxes).
I wanted my book to be comprehensive but especially to give the
bilingual's point of view. Much of what had been written about
bilinguals had been written from a monolingual view point and I wanted
the bilingual to come through in the book. Even now, my biggest source
of satisfaction is when bilinguals tell me they enjoy my book.

6. What positions did you want to defend in your book (and in later
writings)?

When writing my book, and ever since, I have tried to defend a number
of positions which I find important. These are:

- Bilingualism is the use of two (or more) languages in one's everyday
life and not knowing two or more languages equally well and optimally
(as most laypersons think).

- Bilingualism is extremely widespread and is the norm in today's world
(and not the exception).

- The older, monolingual, view of bilingualism has had many negative
consequences, one of the worst being that many bilinguals are very
critical of their own language competence and do not consider
themselves to be bilingual.

- The bilingual is a unique speaker-hearer who should be studied as
such and not always in comparison with the monolingual. The bilingual
uses two languages - separately or together - for different purposes,
in different domains of life, with different people. (See the
Complementarity Principle below). Because the needs and uses of the two
languages are usually quite different, the bilingual is rarely equally
or completely fluent in his/her languages.

- In their everyday lives, bilinguals find themselves at various points
along a situational continuum which induce particular language modes.
The concept of language mode is critical (see below also) and it helps
to differentiate such things as interference, code-switching,
borrowing, etc. which researchers like Weinreich never actually
differentiated.

- People testing (or examining) bilinguals need to take into account
whether the person is in a stage of language restructuring (i.e.
acquiring a new language and/or losing the first one) or whether the
person has attained a stable level of bilingualism. In addition, such
factors as the domains of use of the languages, the language mode the
person is in when being studied, etc. has to be taken into account.

Aspects of bilingualism

7. Your holistic approach to bilingualism is well-known all over the
world. However, many people still hold a monolingual view of
bilingualism, and bilinguals themselves claim that they are not
bilinguals since their language competence is not equal in both
languages. Do you think this is a widespread phenomenon?

Yes, I am afraid it is. Although most researchers throughout the world
have the same defining view of the bilingual, based on the regular use
of two (or more) languages (or dialects) in everyday life, the
layperson still holds a monolingual view of the bilingual who should be
balanced and equally fluent in his/her languages. The problem is that
if one were to follow this "two monolinguals in one person" view, we
would be left without a label for half the world's population. More
seriously, we would be putting forward and describing a person who is
extremely rare. That person would be similar to international
conference interpreters but even they have specialties. I believe that
it is our role as researchers to change the public misconceptions of
bilinguals. I realize that this might take a lot of time but I hope
that one day we will reach that goal. When defending my holistic
approach, I am constantly thinking of bilinguals who belittle their
bilingualism because they do not master their languages to the same
level. This leaves them insecure and worried about their status as
human communicators. This saddens me as all bilinguals should have
positive feelings about their bilingualism. I often tell them that
monolinguals have to cover all domains of life with just one language
and that they, as bilinguals, have to do so with two or more languages
(one language for some domains of life, the other language(s) for other
domains, and two or more languages for yet other domains). They are
human communicators, like monolinguals, but they simply communicate
differently.

8. You state that you investigate stable bilinguals but can a person
ever be a stable bilingual considering the fact that the mental lexicon
keeps changing all the time?

It is true that lexical knowledge, and other linguistic knowledge, do
change over time but probably much more slowly for the stable
bilingual. In my studies, I look at bilinguals who are not
restructuring their languages at that moment (they have not just moved
from one country to another, they are not acquiring a language or
forgetting another language, etc.). All bilinguals are interesting
(those who are becoming bilingual, those who are in the process of
restructuring their various languages, etc.) and they should all be
studied. However, I concentrate on those who have achieved some level
of stability simply because it is easier to study them experimentally.
(Recall that I am an experimental psychologist and that I run
experiments on bilinguals).

9. In your definition of bilingualism, you mention two (or more)
languages (or dialects). Does that mean that you consider bilingualism
and multilingualism to be the same? Aren't there both quantitative and
qualitative differences?

This is a very difficult question for which I don't have a clear
answer. However, I wouldn't be surprised that when we know as much
about multilingualism as we do about bilingualism, we will probably
realize that there are many similarities but also quite a few
differences. I'm happy to see the work on multilingualism increase in
importance in the literature. I'm also happy to see that many concepts
and approaches developed to study the acquisition, the knowledge and
the use of two languages carry over quite easily to three or more
languages, sometimes after having been adapted. It makes a lot of sense
after all.

The complementary principle

10. You have recently proposed the complementary principle to
characterize the bilingual. Can you explain what you mean by this?

The reasons that bring languages into contact and hence foster
bilingualism are many: migrations of various kinds (economic,
educational, political, religious), nationalism and federalism,
education and culture, trade and commerce, intermarriage, etc. These
factors create various linguistic needs in people who are in contact
with two or more languages and who develop competencies in their
languages to the extent required by these needs. In contact situations
it is rare that all facets of life require the same language (people
would not be bilingual if that were so) or that they always demand two
languages (language A and B at work, at home, with friends, etc.). This
leads to what I have called the complementary principle which I define
as follows:

"Bilinguals usually acquire and
use their languages for different purposes, in different domains of
life, with different people. Different aspects of life normally require
different languages."

It is precisely because the needs and uses of the languages are usually
quite different that bilinguals rarely develop equal and total fluency
in their languages. The level of fluency attained in a language (more
precisely, in a language skill) will depend on the need for that
language and will be domain specific.

11. Why is the complementary principle important?

In general, the failure to understand the complementary principle has
been a major obstacle to obtaining a clear picture of bilinguals and
has had many negative consequences: bilinguals have been described and
evaluated in terms of the fluency and balance they have in their two
languages (when in fact they are rarely balanced); language skills in
bilinguals have almost always been appraised in terms of monolingual
standards (but monolinguals use only one language for all domains or
life whereas bilinguals use two or more); research on bilingualism was
often conducted in terms of the bilingual's individual and separate
languages (the use of language A or of language B when in fact both
languages are often used simultaneously); and, finally, many bilinguals
still evaluate their language competencies as inadequate.

12. How does the complementarity principle help us understand the
bilingual?

It helps us understand a number of phenomena. First, it reflects the
true configuration of the bilingual's language repertoire: what
languages are known and to what extent, what they are used for, with
whom and when, why one language is less developed than another, etc.
Second, it helps to explain why the bilingual's language repertoire may
change over time: as the environment changes and the needs for
particular language skills also change, so will the bilingual's
competence in his or her various language skills. New situations, new
interlocutors and new language functions will involve new linguistic
needs and will therefore change the language configuration of the
person involved. Third, an increasing understanding of the
complementary principle has changed researchers' view of bilinguals
these last years. Bilinguals are now seen not so much as the sum of two
(or more) complete or incomplete monolinguals but rather as specific
and fully competent speakers-hearers who have developed a communicative
competence that is equal, but different in nature, to that of
monolinguals. This, in turn, is leading to a redefinition of the
procedure used to evaluate the bilingual's competencies. Bilinguals are
now starting to be studied in terms of their total language repertoire,
and the domains of use and the functions of the bilingual's various
languages are now being taken into account. Finally, the complementary
principle accounts for why regular bilinguals are not usually very good
translators and interpreters. Some may not know the translation
equivalents in the other language (words, phrases, set expressions,
etc.) which in turn will lead to perception and production problems.
Unless bilinguals acquired their second language in a manner which
involves learning translation equivalents, many will find themselves
lacking vocabulary in various domains (work, religion, politics,
sports, etc.) even though some may appear to be fluent in their two
languages.

Language mode, code-switching,
borrowing and interference

13. You have developed the concept of language mode. Can you tell us
what it is?

Language mode is the state of activation of the bilingual's languages
and language processing mechanisms at a given point in time. Bilinguals
find themselves at various points on a situational continuum which will
result in a particular language mode. At one end of the continuum,
bilinguals are in a totally monolingual language mode in that they are
interacting with monolinguals of one - or the other - of the languages
they know. One language is active and the other is deactivated. At the
other end of the continuum, bilinguals find themselves in a bilingual
language mode in that they are communicating with bilinguals who share
their two (or more) languages and with whom they can mix languages
(i.e. code-switch and borrow). In this case, both languages are active
but the one that is used as the main language of communication (the
base language) is more active than the other. These are end points but
bilinguals also find themselves at intermediary points depending on
such factors as interlocutor, situation, content of discourse and
function of the interaction.

14. You believe that language mode is important in the study of
bilinguals. Why is that?

Language mode has received relatively little attention in bilingualism
research and yet it is a crucial factor: it gives a truer reflection of
how bilinguals process their two languages, separately or together; it
helps us understand data obtained from various bilingual populations;
it can partly account for problematic or ambiguous findings relating to
such topics as language representation and processing, interference,
code-switching, language mixing in bilingual children, bilingual
aphasics, etc.; and, finally, it is invariably present in bilingualism
research as an independent, control or confounding variable and hence
needs to be heeded at all times. Let me take just one example among
many. In the bilingual language development literature, it has been
proposed by some that children who acquire two languages simultaneously
go through an early fusion stage in which the languages are in fact one
system (one lexicon, one grammar, etc.). They then slowly differentiate
their languages, first separating their lexicons and then their
grammar. Evidence for this has come from the observation of language
mixing in very young bilingual children and from the fact that there is
a gradual reduction of mixing as the child grows older. However this
position has been criticized by a number of researchers such as Juergen
Meisel and Fred Genesee, among others, and one of the points made each
time (in addition to the fact that translation equivalents may not be
known in the other language; see the complementarity principle) is that
the context in which the recordings were made for the studies probably
induced language mixing as it was rarely (if ever) monolingual. The
children in these studies were probably in a bilingual mode and hence
language mixing took place.

15. There are quite a lot of misconceptions and some confusion
regarding the definition of code-switching, mixing, borrowing and
interference. Tell us about interference first.

As I have just said, I believe that much of the misunderstanding
regarding these categories comes from the fact that researchers do not
take into account the bilingual's language mode when studying bilingual
language production. Language mixing (which for me is a cover term for
code-switching and borrowing) does not usually occur in a monolingual
mode (there are some exceptions however). In this mode though, one does
find interferences which are speaker-specific deviations from the
language being spoken due to the influence of the other language(s).
They can occur at all levels of language (phonological, lexical,
syntactic, semantic, pragmatic) and in all modalities (spoken, written
or sign). Interferences are of two kinds: there are static
interferences which reflect permanent traces of one language on the
other (an aspect of interlanguage therefore) and there are dynamic
interferences which are the ephemeral intrusions of the other
(deactivated) language as in the case of the accidental slip on the
stress pattern of a word due to the stress rules of the other language,
the momentary use of a syntactic structure taken from the language not
being spoken, etc. Interferences can only be studied if the bilingual
is in a monolingual mode as other forms of mixing (code-switching and
borrowing) do not normally take place in that mode.

16. What about code-switching and borrowing then?

In a bilingual mode, once a base language has been chosen, bilinguals
can bring in the other language (the "guest" or "embedded" language) in
various ways. One of these ways is to code-switch, that is to
shift completely to the other language for a word, a phrase, a
sentence. The other way is to borrow a word or short expression from
that language and to adapt it morphologically (and often
phonologically) into the base language. Thus, unlike code-switching,
which is the juxtaposition of two languages, borrowing is the
integration of one language into another. Most often both the form and
the content of a word are borrowed (to produce what has been called a
loanword or more simply a borrowing). A second type of borrowing,
called a loanshift, consists in either taking a word in the base
language and extending its meaning to correspond to that of a word in
the other language, or rearranging words in the base language along a
pattern provided by the other language and thus creating a new meaning.
I believe, like Shana Poplack, that it is important to distinguish
idiosyncratic loans (also called "speech borrowings" or "nonce
borrowings") from words which have become part of a language
community's vocabulary and which monolinguals also use (called
"language borrowings" or "established loans").

Psycholinguistics of
bilingualism

17. How do you see of the bilingual's mental representations?

I am still very much a believer in the difference between competence
and performance. The bilingual has knowledge of two or more languages
(to differing levels) and uses this knowledge when perceiving and
producing his/her languages, spoken individually or together in the
form of mixed language. The concept of "representation" can be used to
characterize knowledge (e.g. grammatical competence, lexical
competence, etc.) or a stage in the actual use of language: the
representation which is verbalized during language production, or the
representation which is the outcome of processing during language
perception (one talks of the interpretative representation then).

18. Some researchers seem to say that the bilingual memory does not
exist. What is your feeling about this?

In my mind, it is important to separate memory processes from what is
stored. Memory processes allow you to put information into various
memories (iconic, short term, long term, etc.) and they are probably
very similar, if not identical, among all speakers, be they monolingual
or bilingual. However, the permanent linguistic stores (containing our
lexical and grammatical knowledge) must be different, in large part,
for the languages known. Bilinguals have two language networks which
are both independent and interconnected. They are independent in the
sense that they allow a bilingual to speak just one language. And they
are interconnected in the sense that the monolingual speech of
bilinguals often shows the active interference of the other language,
and that when bilinguals speak to other bilinguals, they can
code-switch and borrow quite readily. This view has long been defended
by Michel Paradis who proposes that both languages are stored in
identical ways in a single extended system, though elements of each
language, because they often appear in different contexts, form
separate networks of connections, and thus a subsystem within a larger
system. It is what he calls the subset hypothesis.

19. What do you think about the structure of the mental lexicon?
Weinreich's categories are a bit out of date but what are your views of
the compound, coordinate and subordinate distinction?

I have a lot of respect for Uriel Weinreich's work which, I think, has
not always been understood clearly. His categories did not only apply
to lexical meaning but to other levels of language too and I do not
believe he stated that bilinguals could only reflect one type. I cover
the whole controversy in several pages in my book (pp. 240-244) and
after rereading what I wrote, I still agree with the main points I
make. The bilingual's linguistic knowledge is far too complex to be
categorized into one of three categories when most bilinguals are a bit
of all three. For example, at the level of the lexicon, researchers now
hypothesize that within the very same bilingual, some words in the two
lexicons will have a coordinate relationship, others a compound
relationship and still others a subordinate relationship, especially if
the languages were acquired in different cultural settings and at
different times.

20. Would you briefly summarize the essence of your Bilingual Model of
Lexical Access?

Back in 1988, I proposed an interactive activation model of word
recognition in bilinguals, which has since been named BIMOLA (Bilingual
Model of Lexical Access). It is strongly inspired by McClelland and
Elman's TRACE model and it is governed by two basic assumptions. First,
it is assumed that bilinguals have two language networks (features,
phonemes, words, etc.) which are independent yet interconnected. They
are independent in the sense that they allow a bilingual to speak just
one language but they are also interconnected in that the monolingual
speech of bilinguals often shows the active interference of the other
language, and in that bilinguals can code-switch and borrow quite
readily when they speak to other bilinguals. The second assumption is
that in the monolingual language mode, one language network is strongly
activated while the other is only very weakly activated (the resting
activation level of the units of this other network is therefore very
low) whereas in the bilingual language mode, both language networks are
activated but one more than the other. In BIMOLA, the feature level is
common to both languages but the next two levels - phonemes and words -
are organized according to the subset hypothesis, that is, both
independently (each language is represented by a subset of units) but
also interdependently (both subsets are enclosed in a larger set). At
both the word and phoneme levels, units can have close or distant form
neighbors, both within a language and between languages. Connections
are unidirectional between features and phonemes and bidirectional
between phonemes and words. Features activate phonemes which in turn
activate words. Descending connections bearing information about the
listener's base language and language mode serve to activate words
which in turn activate phonemes. Language activation (reflected by the
overall activation of one language system over the other) takes place
through these descending connections but also through within language
connections at the phoneme and word levels. The model has been refined
these last years and implemented on computer by Nicolas Léwy.

Deafness and bilingualism

21. Your paper on the right of the deaf child to be bilingual has been
translated into several languages. Tell us about it.

One day, back in 1999, I was asked to give a short presentation on the
bilingualism of deaf children. As you may know, I had already written
several papers on the bilingualism of the Deaf. When planning this
particular talk (and then paper), I came up with the idea of starting
with what a deaf child needs to do with language, that is, communicate
early with his/her parents, develop his/her cognitive abilities,
acquire knowledge of the world, communicate fully with the surrounding
world, and acculturate into the world of the hearing and of the Deaf. I
then continued with the fact that if these behaviors are truly
important for the child, then the only way of meeting these needs is to
allow the child to become bilingual in sign language and speech. Sign
language can help trigger the language acquisition device, give a
natural language to the child in the first years, and also help the
acquisition of the oral language. I ended the paper by stating that one
never regrets knowing several languages but one can certainly regret
not knowing enough, especially if one's own development is at stake.
The deaf child should have the right to grow up bilingual and it is our
responsibility to help him/her do so. Since then, this short paper has
had more success than any of my other writings! It has been translated
into some twenty languages (among them Chinese, Japanese, Russian,
Spanish, Hungarian, etc.) and has appeared in numerous publications.

22. Is the situation of deaf children changing? In some countries the
oral vs. sign debate is still raging.

I do believe that things are changing since the bilingual approach that
many of us defend does not put into question the importance of either
the oral language or sign language. Both are needed and so the
defenders of the one, or of the other, feel less threatened by this
middle of the road approach. In addition, since recent research has
shown that sign language can help the acquisition of the oral language,
in particular that of writing skills, parents, educators and language
pathologists are showing real interest in this other way of doing
things. Many schools in North and South America (e.g. Canada, the
United States, Nicaragua, Colombia, etc.) follow a bilingual approach.
This is also the case of Scandinavia, The Netherlands and other
European countries. Still other countries are slowly opening themselves
up to this approach. I firmly believe that in the years to come, deaf
children will be allowed to be bilingual in their very early childhood.

Current research

23. Tell us something about your current research on bilingualism.

Since I am an experimental psycholinguist by training, I am
continuing experimental (and computational work with N. Léwy) on
bilingual speech processing (see, for example, our recent study with D.
Guillelmon on the processing of gender marking by early and late
bilinguals). The aim is to better understand how bilinguals process
language when in a monolingual mode (and hence when their other
language is deactivated) and when in a bilingual mode (that is, when
they produce and perceive a base-language as well as code-switches and
borrowings from the other language). I also write general papers on the
bilingual and bicultural person (hearing and deaf) and I keep
"fighting" against well-established (but false) ideas about
bilingualism. In addition, as you know, I have been very busy these
last five years editing, with fellow editors, the journal Bilingualism:
Language and Cognition (Cambridge University Press). As soon as I step
down from the co-editorship, I would like to write another book on
bilingualism which will summarize all the work that I have done on the
subject since Life with Two Languages.

References of some recent
writings on bilingualism

Grosjean, F. (1996). Living with two languages and two cultures. In
Parasnis, I. (Ed.). Cultural and
Language Diversity and the Deaf
Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.